BARCELONA in PELYNT PARISH.

The other day I was speaking to my mum and dad on the phone, they had just come back from Cornwall they heard about a side of our family from plenth and the area now known as Barcelona, this was part of the Domesday manor of Trelawne. They found out this information below and this site that I will reference as the source to the information. My dad has some images that I will upload later.

my mum has traced the people in this story to my ancestors and I have linked them in our family chart. Website where the story is taken from.There is a lease there dating back to 1637.Andrew Dyer built a dwelling-house and blacksmith’s shop at Trelawne Cross. The lease is later endorsed ‘No house or shop there now’ but unfortunately the endorsement isn’t dated.

This lease is interesting in that someone has written ‘In thePit’ beneath the words Trelawne Cross so I suspect the first blacksmith’s shop was actually at the quarry a few yards down the road from the present shop. Holiday chalets, known as ‘Granite Henge’, have now been built in this quarry but in the C19 stone from what was then known as ‘Blue Gate Quarry’ was used in the building of Pelynt School as well as for repairs to the Church and many other buildings in the parish. Fifty years before Dyer built his house at Trelawne Cross the Dyer family had been farming close by at Ashen Cross. I don’t think Dyer’s shop lasted very long as in 1666 James Bartlett was granted permission to build a new blacksmith’s shop a few hundred yards down the road at what is now Greystone Pool. James Bartlett died sometime between 1683 and 1703 and I suspect it was at this point that the blacksmith’s shop and cottages were built at Barcelona. The name ‘Barcelona’ first appears on documents circa1740 and I believe the area was named in memory of one of Bishop Sir

Jonathan Trelawny’s sons who died when his ship the Association sank off the Isles of Scilly in 1707. He was returning from
Spain at the time hence the name ‘Barcelona’. In 1740 the Jago family were living at Barcelona, they had a house, garden and orchard and their lease was held on the lives of John, the lessee, who was 40 years old at the time, his wife Elizabeth and young son Thomas. The last Jago to live at Barcelona was John Jago who, as a retired
blacksmith, was living there with his niece Mary Light and her family in 1881. The 1740 Survey of the Manor of Trelawne leads me to believe there were three cottages at Barcelona even at this date. One, as I have already said was the home of William Jago and his lease had been granted by Bishop Trelawny’s brother Charles. Another lease on the 1740 survey was for ‘Barcelona or Trelawne Cross’ and this was held by Elizabeth Jago on the lives of William and Edward both in their 30’s and presumably her sons. Both this lease and the third one were granted by Sir Jonathan Trelawny so must have been made before 1721.

The third lease was for ‘one moiety in Barcelona’ held by John Tincomb on the lives of John Tincomb junior age 48 and Susan Tincomb 45. I feel sure it is this part of Barcelona that turns up in the latter half of the C18 in Mr Zephaniah Job’s account books. Mr Job of Polperro, apart from being the Polperro smugglers banker was also land agent for several of the ‘gentry’ families in the area including the Trelawnys. In one of his account books is a reference to ‘Trelawne Cross House’ being
let by the Eastcott family at a rent of £1-3-0 and in 1778 he mentions a W. Higgins as being the tenant. The account book also tells us that Sir Harry Trelawny bought Trelawne Cross House in 1783 but I think this must refer to the leasehold and that the freehold had always been with the Manor of Trelawne. By 1840 Sir Harry Trelawny had died and, due to the complexity of his will, his executors were running the estate. The 1840 Tithe Schedule shows three people occupying Barcelona but none of them held leases on their property but were simply tenants.

The left cottage and garden strip was occupied by William Andrew, a 60 year old carpenter who lived there with his wife. In the middle cottage was Samuel Rundle aged 30, his wife and two young children. Samuel had a garden across the road (where the grass verge is now) and he was a shoemaker by trade. The largest cottage in 1840 was on the right of the group and this was the home ofJOHN JAGOage 60. John, the son of William andRachel Jago, had been baptised in 1780 and may well have been the grandson or great grandson of the William Jago on the 1740 Survey. In 1740 the Jago property consisted of a house, orchard and garden and in 1840 John’s property also consisted of a house, garden and orchard, plus a blacksmith’s shop and outhouses across the road from the house and on the site of the present shop.

The 1841 census describes John as a farmer but there was another John Jago living with him who was the son of Henry Jago the blacksmith in the village of Pelynt. This John also had his sister working in the house at Barcelona. The master of the house also rented two farms from the Trelawnys. The 70 acres at Wayland Farm were just a few hundred yards up the road from Barcelona and the 67 acres of land John rented around the Manor-house at Trelawne extended down
the valley to take in a cottage on the edge of Trelawne Wood, known as Trelawne Garden Cottage, where another member of the Jago family lived.

John had his wife and a daughter living with him in 1841 plus four male and two female servants. Most of the men would have been working in the busy forge where the sound of their hammer would ring out all day. There was one other family living at Barcelona in 1841 but I am not sure whose house they were sharing. William Dingle worked as an agricultural labourer and he had a wife and baby daughter living with him. In 1851 the carpenter William Andrews was employing three men but he still lived alone with his wife. In August that year his wife died and was laid to rest in Pelynt Churchyard where a gravestone was later erected to her memory. William himself died in 1860 at the age of 84.

A new shoemaker was living in the middle cottage in 1851. His name was Charles Collings and he and his wife were both Catholics and attended the newly built Catholic Church at Sclerder as did John Jago and his family next door. When Sir Harry Trelawny and his daughters became Catholic in the early C19 they had quite an influence on their tenants and several families embraced this religion at that time. Sadly Charles Collings died in February 1861 at the young age of 44 but his widow was still in their cottage later that year when the census was taken. She had her 69 year old mother in law sharing her home. Ann had been the wife of an agricultural labourer and they had lived at Greystone Pool till his death possibly in 1853. By 1861, at the age of 69, she was classed as a pauper. She died two years later. In 1861 her widowed daughter in law was working as a laundress, probably for the Trelawnys at the ‘Big House’.

In 1851 John Jago, now aged 71, was back to being classed as a blacksmith, employing 2 men both
of whom lived in and both of whom had been working for him in 1841. His wife and ‘infirm’ daughter lived with him as did his 8 year old grand-daughter Ann Dingle and a house-servant. Needless to say the Jag’s were still the resident blacksmiths in 1861. Old John had moved down the road to Ashen Cross, possibly after his wife’s death in 1860, but his ‘servant’ young John Jago was still living at Barcelona and working as a blacksmith. I am sure these two Johns were related but the Jago family in Pelynt are a complex lot and I haven’t sorted them out yet. Young Jon’s sister and five year old niece were living at Barcelona to keep him company and his parents and brother had also left Pelynt village and moved to part of Barcelona by this time. The elderly Henry Jago and his wife were both receiving parish relief whilst young Henry was working in the forge and his two teenage sons working as agricultural labourers. There was one other family living at Barcelona in 1861.

Young Joan Hamble and his wife were helping to make his meagre earnings as an agricultural labourer pay the rent by having two lodgers. One was a carpenter from Devonport and the other a mason’s labourer from Bodmin and both were almost certainly working on Trelawne Manor which was undergoing extensive alterations at this time. They may also have helped to build the new cottages at Barcelona as it is likely that at least part of the present three cottages had been built on. the site of the earlier ones a couple of years before the 1861 census. I am unsure which of the three cottages had two families sharing it in 1861 but by 1871 there were only three families living at Barcelona. The census shows there only being two houses at that time so maybe this had something to do with the rebuilding of the cottages. ‘Young’ John Jago now classed himself a ‘Master Blacksmith’. He had never married and at the age of 53 was living alone in his cottage although sharing it with his young niece and nephew Joseph and Mary Light. Joseph came from St Neot and was a journeyman blacksmith. The couple had baptised their first daughter Catharine in November 1869. Between 1872 and 1891 they baptised four sons and another two daughters. By 1881 John Jago had retired and his nephew was running the forge single handed. I can find no record of John’s burial but presumably he stayed at Barcelona till his end.

The Light family were still in residence in 1891 but in 1911 Joseph died at the age of 66. His
widow continued to live at Barcelona and was advertising her blacksmith’s shop in the 1923 edition of Kelly’s Directory. However, three years later her youngest son Frederick was calling himself a farmer at Barcelona and the forge was now run by the Warring family. The forge was in use up till
1976 when William Warring retired and in recent years the great fire has been re-kindled and the ringing sound of iron hammers echoes across Barcelona once again.

We must now go back to the 1871 to see the other families at Barcelona. The widow Charlotte Gollings was still a laundress but had re-married. Her new husband, Joseph Rosevear classed himself an agricultural labourer although eight years earlier he said he was a farmer when he baptised their daughter Fanny Cobbledick Rosevear in Pelynt . Fanny was with her parents in 1871. Joseph was the son of John and Catherine Rosevear who lived at Gushland, just a few yards down the road where he had lived till his marriage. The Rosevears were still living in the middle cottage in 1881 but had gone by 1891 when the occupier was a local carpenter called Thomas Wakeham. Thomas was the son of William and Elizabeth Wakeham and had followed in his father’s footsteps as his own 18 year old son Ernest was doing. Thomas had been born in Summer Lane and moved to Greystone Pool sometime after his marriage before coming on up the road to Barcelona. As I have already said, there were only two cottages at Barcelona in 1871 but by 1881 the third cottage had been rebuilt and a new family moved in. I think the Olver family were living in the left hand side of the group as he was the Trelawne Land Agent at the time. This cottage still shows features of when it was an office as well as a home. The back extension has a separate door (now blocked on the inside) and bars at its windows and this was used as the estate office for many years. The Olvers were a Morval family and possibly got the job through the influence of Harriet, later Lady Trelawny. She had grown up at Morval where her father was Rector and her mother a daughter of the Bullers.

The Olver’s first child had been baptised at St Martins Church but the next three were baptised at Pelynt. Lady Trelawny regularly visited the Olvers at Barcelona during their stay there. She was producing children at the same time as Mary Maud so they had a lot to talk about. The Olvers had
moved on, I think back to Morval, by 1891 when Thomas Reddicliffe the Trelawne coachman lived in the house with his wife and three children, one of whom worked as a groom. The family came from Devon but I’m not sure how long they stayed at Barcelona.I am unsure when the cottages were sold by the Trelawny family. They don’t appear on the 1913 or 1920 sale catalogues so may have been sold privately. Barcelona cottages are listed grade 11 and
now consist of two houses and two flats. There are two date stones on the cottages, 1856 and 1857, with the initials WLST and FCST on them. The blacksmith’s shop is now owned separately